


Ereborean Blends

by watsonmycompass



Series: The Teamaker [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: All Of The Tea, Alternate Universe - Erebor Reclaimed, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, Asexual Character, Demisexual!Bilbo, Depression, F/F, F/M, Family, Fell Winter, Female Bilbo, Female Bilbo Baggins, Female Bilbo Baggins/Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, Fluff, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Oxford Commas, Rule 63, Shire Politics, Tea, but maybe demisexual is a better descriptor, it's complex and she never labels it, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-03-10 00:35:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3270143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watsonmycompass/pseuds/watsonmycompass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the dwarves rallied to their King and reclaimed Erebor only seventy-one years after they first lost it, the Sackville-Bagginses get their hands on Bag End a lot earlier than they anticipated, and Gandalf interferes with everything, as usual.<br/>Alternatively: Bella is a bit lost when her parents die, even more so after the Brandywine freezes over and Orcs raze half the Shire to the ground. She is in need of a home, and the Ri brothers have a position open in Erebor, for a cook/serving maid in Dori's teashop/fine culinary establishment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Earl Grey

**Author's Note:**

> All of the Oxford commas. ALL OF THEM.  
> I've always been really fond of fem!Bilbo, and then this happened. There's quite a lot of exposition before we even get to Erebor (and I am the most pretentious writer I know so sorry about that) but once we do everyone you know and love will be involved in the story, which will probably take mostly drabble form. Hope you enjoy! :)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> black tea and bergamot.  
> In which it begins.

Bella's mother died very suddenly, two months after her father caught a cold. Bungo had been the opposite of Belladonna in almost every way; homely (although not in looks, since his well rounded figure and kind face were, it was common knowledge, considered very desirable by nearly all the hobbit lasses in the Shire) content, they thought, with everything. His life, his family, with his quiet peaceful existence, with his books and his pipe. It had been really unaccountable at the time when Belladonna Took, the ninth daughter of Old Gerontius Took if you please, though there were plenty of first born Proudfeet and Bracegirdle lasses who would have had him and been glad, had caught his eye.

It was not so surprising as all that that the two had come to a bad end, the gossips reflected more than thirty five years later, as the spring of T.A 2861 melted gently into summer. Camellia Sackville had been about their age then and moved in the same circles when they had first begun courting. She had even (entirely accidentally, mind you) overheard what was Belladonna's third rejection of the most eligible bachelor in Hobbiton in as many months, and didn't that little titbit put the Shire in an uproar. It had been at little Rosa Chubb's coming of age celebrations, and she had stepped out for some air to find the two of them sequestered quietly in the garden.

"I don't suppose you've given any more thought to my question." Bungo had asked quietly, taking a calm draw off his pipe. His waistcoat buttons were finely polished brass, the material a deep, rich maroon, Camellia remembered; and back then she hadn't been able to avoid something that closely resembled a love-struck sigh. Bungo was pleasantly rotund, his hair was a thick mass of well tamed light brown curls, and his tastes were for convenience and comfort. What more could a young hobbit girl want?

"Well." she heard Belladonna reply, also infuriatingly tranquil. "I can't see that there's anything more to think about. I don't wish to lose my friend, Bungo, but I have very little interest in staying the rest of my life in the home of your relations, cooking and running about after children when I could be running about in the big wide world." She paused then for a moment, and said slowly as if remembering; "The world is not in your books and maps, Bungo Baggins."

When Bungo spoke again, which was after a few moments of puffing away on his pipe and considering, his voice was measured, full of warm humour and a tenderness that made Camellia bristle and feel as if she was intruding. She was of course, but wasn't often made to feel it.

"I have a very keen interest in cooking myself, did you know Belladonna? There's nothing I like to do more."

Belladonna's laugh was low, but full of honest amusement. "You're not going to give up on this, are you?"

Bungo just took another draw on his pipe and, much to Camellia's disappointment, neither of them said anything else. They sat in companionable silence until the moon was high in the sky and the stars were as bright as they've ever been, always brighter when shining down on would-be lovers.

The next day, Bungo Baggins hired one of the more bookish Bracegirdle lads to draw up the plans for a private smial, close enough to Hobbiton market to be convenient, far enough away towards the rolling Shire hills and dusty country roads to afford its inhabitants some privacy. The gentle, comfortable hobbit built the entire thing with his own hands, the loss of their pleasing softness lamented over by many a lass and their mothers too, especially when Belladonna finally accepted his proposal and married him six months later amidst a whirlwind of jealous whispers. What they didn’t know was that Belladonna didn’t care a jot about the fine polished wood of the doorframes or the beautiful linen curtains or the well varnished book shelves given to them by Old Took himself as a wedding present. She cared that Bungo had listened to her; that he swore he wouldn’t mind if she was away adventuring for weeks at a time and that she wouldn’t have to so much as touch a broom if she didn’t want to. She cared about the little crinkle he always got around the eyes when he smiled.

And their odd, unheard of love lasted them almost forty years; until Bungo was caught in the rain and caught a cold which turned out to be something rather more, and Belladonna lasted barely two months on her own before following him. It was not in fact surprising, as many of the gossips said, that such a strange couple had come to their end in grief. But that sentiment was not much of a comfort to their daughter Bella, barely of age, and heartsick, for the two hobbits who had loved each other so very much they’d been forced to leave her behind.


	2. Lady Grey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> black tea, seville orange, lemon, bergamot, lavender and cornflower.  
> In which the Sackville-Bagginses are... the Sackville Bagginses.

"Hurry up, Billana." trilled Bella's aunt, and the hobbit lass winced.

Almost the worst thing, Bella thought at times about living with her Aunt Camellia, was her insistence on calling her niece by her given name. There were a hundred other small indignities of course; people trampling all over Bag End as the Sackvilles eagerly showed off their new home, plans already being made to pull up the flower beds she had spent her childhood painstakingly tending to... but every time her aunt called her by her given name Bella felt a pang of hurt, deep in her chest, that was as fresh now as it had been the day her father had died, a day followed closely on her internal list of Absolute Worst Most Horrible Days Ever by her mother's death and both their funerals.

Nobody else had ever called Bella by her birth name. To her cousins, friends and neighbours, the people she encountered in the market or at any of the hundreds of family celebrations that had taken place over the years, she had always been Bella, ever since she was a very little girl stumbling over her vowel sounds. It was only her father who was allowed to call her that, and he only did when he was serious or cross. He wasn't cross very often however, and when he _was_ someone who didn't know him would have found it impossible to tell. It was all in the eyebrows, her mother had always said.

The last time he'd had cause to use it, she'd been twenty three perhaps, disappearing into the forest as her father called after her and thinking herself hot on the trail of elves. No--she'd gone running off with her Took cousins again. This time they had risen early before anyone else could wake and stolen off to the outskirts of the Shire and Northfarthing with pilfered jam and the contents of Bag End's pantry. It was only when she'd returned late that evening, the crickets humming lazily in Farmer Maggot’s cornfields--covered with mud, tired out and contented--that she'd discovered the worry her father had been put through in her absence. Her mother had gone to Bree to visit one of her married friends that morning and knew nothing about it--and, her father promised with a twinkle in his eye (after the colour had returned to his face) she wouldn't have to know anything about it either. "My little Billana," he had said quietly as they sat in the kitchen later, almost as if to himself he spoke so low. She had flushed with shame when she'd realized that he was still trying to reassure himself she was actually there. Then he'd shaken himself out of his reverie and set his chin in its familiar, stubborn tilt, saying firmly; "I love you dearly my girl, and I know better than to try and change you, what with your mother's faerie blood. Nor do I wish you changed. But remember, adventure doesn't have to be reckless, and it doesn't have to come at the cost of the ones you love. Anyone who tells you different, well, you can send them straight to my door to have a word with me!"

But he was gone. And he couldn't have told the whole _Shire_ off for her at any rate.

"You've got mud on your hem." her cousin Lobelia, Camellia's daughter-in-law piped up from the corner of the room, and Bella flinched. She was right, the fine, stiff black cotton Camellia had given her was touched by a tell-tale deep brown at the ends. She sent her second cousin by marriage a look of hangdog betrayal, and she could tell Lobelia was trying not to laugh when she raised her eyebrows slightly back. For a short second, a glimmer of warmth pulsed through Bella’s chest; it was very difficult usually to make Lobelia laugh, so she always felt strangely proud every time she managed it.

Lobelia's observation prompted a new round of fussing over Bella's clothes from her aunt, and scoldings for her carelessness. What did she think a gardener was for, but kneeling down in the earth so respectable young lasses didn't have to? Bella had a horrible, momentary urge to laugh at that and she had to stuff her fist into her mouth to stop herself. She could still see the intent look on Bungo's face as he leaned across the kitchen table towards her. _Nor, my dear girl, do I wish you changed._

Catching sight of herself for a moment in the window pane, she didn't recognize the strange, proper-looking lass staring back at her. The carefree girl was gone--that girl had tramped through fields in muddied trousers with her mother, her hair cropped short then into a haze of gold. Now, in her place, stood a lass no one would ever question was a Baggins. The dour mourning dress she wore had been Camellia’s when she was young, far finer than anything Bella had ever owned before. Its tight stays and innumerable petticoats not only made it very difficult to breathe, but impractical to move about in, and the fauntling she’d been ten years earlier wouldn't have taken one look at it before refusing point blank to put it on--but when Camellia had held it out to her earlier that morning she'd felt strangely powerless to refuse. She had no control over anything else in her life after all, so why should she be able choose the way she looked?

Her hair had grown out and was caught up demurely in a knot at the back of her neck. She became aware of a deep-seated sense of discomfort as she stood there looking at herself, and shame brought a flush of pink to her cheeks. This was who she was now. She wasn't the brave, lion-hearted adventuress she'd often dreamed of being when she was a fauntling. She was just a hobbit. She was just a little hobbit lass, soon to be evicted, friendless and out of place.

Her grandfather the Thain had come to see her just two days after the funeral. It wasn’t proper, he’d explained gently, that a young lass live in such a large smial all alone. He was certain she would be much happier in Tuckborough where she could be among cousins her own age. But there was nothing he could say to soften the blow. Her parents had no male heir, and Bella had no husband. The Sackville-Bagginses had moved in two days later.

-

Uncle Longo owned Bag End, Uncle Longo who had turned up his nose at his cousin's new bride from the first moment he saw her, who had turned up his nose throughout Bella's childhood whenever she had gone to him, her little face brimming over with excitement about whatever new wonder she had found--a little toad jewelled with dew, blinking up from the safe hollow of her hands; a sleek, dark bird feather she imagined just _must_ be an eagle's... Uncle Longo who had always turned her away as a child, made it very clear that he disapproved of her parents' love, and of her very existence by extension.

And it was Aunt Camellia’s home too now of course. Aunt Camellia who Bella had overheard in the parlour at Bag End three weeks after her parents' deaths, sighing officiously over the state of the curtains with Zinnia Proudfoot and telling her that she would do her _very best to undo Belladonna's bad influence on the girl, but some fauntlings just had less natural breeding than others._

For a moment, standing hidden behind the door her father had painted and listening to her aunt commiserate over her with Zinnia Proudfoot, she had felt rage, white-hot and burning in her veins for the first time since her mother had died--and the urge to storm into the room, shout and scream, upend the beautiful china teapot Camellia had commandeered from her father's kitchen cupboards all over somewhere very unfortunate.

But the teapot had been her mothers and if she made a scene like that she would have to leave it--even sooner, in fact, than she already would. Her rage had been replaced in a moment with panic at the thought. Every nook and cranny of Bag End would be lost to her in a matter of days, the home her father had built for her mother with his roughening hands. Every little keepsake Belladonna had brought back from her travels, each insignificant object Bella had grown up with, with its own story attached. She was the only one left to know all those stories now. Every inch of the smial held some dear memory of her parents, and every second she had left there was precious; every passing moment painful and quicksilver.

Which was why she felt so strange that morning, sitting gingerly on the edge of the window seat in her dour mourning colours, waiting for her cousins to come and take her to Tuckborough in the old pony and cart. Camellia was talking angrily about the lack of manners and good breeding showed up when people were late. Lobelia interjected every now and then with one of her more cutting remarks, but she seemed almost bored by the whole thing. Longo paced up and down irritably in the entrance hall waiting. Her cousins were outside, or would be soon--Paladin Took and Saradoc Brandybuck, she remembered, come to take her to Took Hall. She hadn't been to Tuckborough for almost five years even before Bungo's illness, and since their deaths she hadn't been able to broach the subject of visiting her Took family with the Sackville-Bagginses. There was a small, childish part of her that was scared if she was away for more than a few hours at a time they would lock up the doors and windows and not let her back in again.

Lobelia, who had been watching her with knowing eyes from the corner where she was installed, threw her hand dramatically up to her forehead and announced she was feeling faint. The pandemonium that followed was instantaneous, distracted all attention away from Bella and, she privately thought, was dreadfully entertaining.

The day before, Lobelia had shared some news with her parents-in-law: she and Otho were expecting. The news that the Sackville-Baggins clan would have an heir after all, barely three months after the wedding, was met with triumph and excitement. After dinner that night Longo and Camellia had retreated to the warmest corner of the parlour and sat there talking for more than an hour in low, eager voices, shooting glances at Bella every now and then. Bella for her part had felt the beginnings of nausea rising in her chest. It wasn't difficult to guess what they were deciding. It had been barely a month since her mother had faded, but no one in Hobbiton would have blamed them for turning Bella out before then, it wasn't as if she had nowhere to go after all. However, taking on the responsibility of your cousin's unmarried daughter, though there was an entire great-smial of Tooks a score of miles away who would do it just as well, did lend you a certain degree of martyrdom. _And Camellia likes to be seen as a martyr,_ Bella thought with uncharacteristic bitterness, clenching her fists in her dark skirts. She and Lobelia had had to take tea half a dozen times in the last week with people come to express their condolences, and every time they did one well-meaning hobbit or another would tell her how lucky she was to have such caring relations and wax poetic about how grateful she must be. And she had had to smile every time, because to do otherwise could mean losing her inheritance for good. She still had hope that Old Took would listen when she explained how important her home was to her--how her father had built it for his family, and she wasn't being selfish by wanting to keep it. If she had been a lad, after all, or even married at the time of her parents' deaths, no one would have breathed a word about asking her to leave. Her grandfather was a kind man, she tried to convince herself. And not a wilfully stupid one. He would see.

The sound of hooves clopping gently against the path outside and a good-natured "Whoaaa!" from the cart's rider drifted in through the window; Bella turned her head to look so fast she strained her neck. In the commotion it caused, Lobelia made a miraculous recovery and Bella sent her a small smile, which Lobelia returned with a sardonic nod as was her custom. Although they hardly spoke and whenever they did they tended to snap at each other horribly, Lobelia had become a comfort to her in that strange, in-between month living in the same home. She'd not always been a Sackville-Baggins after all--Lobelia Bracegirdle had been a worthy adversary when they were still children--and she saw more than she let on. Bella had even gotten the distinct impression, a handful of times, that her childhood nemesis was _trying to_ _help_.

But she couldn't think about it anymore because footsteps were coming up to the door, large feet crunching on the rose gravel path, and Bella stood abruptly. With her father's illness (followed so quickly by her mother's fading and then, well, the Sackvilles) it had been almost half a year since she'd last left home for more than a few hours at a time... but it wasn't home anymore now, was it? Suddenly she found herself breathing with some difficulty. _Father and Mother's bedroom smells like Longo’s hair oil now_ , she thought. _And the green curtains are gone._

There was a cheerful knock at the door, and Bella thought of the carefree cousins she had gone running off with as a child in search of excitement and fun, her little heart still full with the thought of the world in front of her; then again of her father's words. _My little Billana... adventure doesn't have to come at the cost of the ones you love._

_Perhaps,_ she thought, _if you are very very clever--you can have both._

She stepped forward to answer the door; and the life she'd lived until then disappeared from view behind her, left forever in Bag End's porch. As for adventures, well. She would have many more than she ever could have wished for in her lifetime. And family... only time would tell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Lady Grey tea usually only has Seville orange and lavender either/or, and cornflower is a rare addition. However, I kind of wanted to labour the point that the Sackvilles are quite cloying and over the top. Also, I put far too much thought into characterisation and tea.  
> I edited this chapter a lot actually, and cut out big swathes of it, so hopefully it's OK. I haven't written in a long time so I think the rhythm is a bit out of joint. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have any tips or feedback for me, I need all the help I can get :)


	3. winterberry (one)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nettle, dried rose hips, strawberry flowers and marigold.  
> In which Gandalf returns from his travels in Middle-Earth and finds the Shire very much changed.

Gandalf sat on the back of a farmer's cart, trundling along the winding, country roads that led to Hobbiton. He was puffing away on the last of his supply of Old Toby, a crease between his eyebrows as if he were deep in thought. In fact, he was--and not all of it pleasant. He had been away from the Shire for a long time, but the stories he had heard of its history in the last few years were not promising.

A bad winter had come, its cold so biting that even the little growing tricks and green thumbs of Hobbits had not held it at bay, and the harvest was destroyed. The Brandywine had frozen over too as far as Gandalf had been able to make out (from the somewhat muddled reports of Men) and white wolves had come down across it in search of prey. There were even rumours of Orcish involvement, and Gandalf, who had dismissed such whisperings as soon as he'd heard them (the Orcs' war with the Dwarves which had begun a full century earlier had left their dark forces decimated in the North) began to wonder if such a horror might have come to pass after all.

Bree had been full of life the last time he'd passed through. Now, it was practically dead in comparison. The people were wary, and when Gandalf had asked about the recent troubles the barkeep (up until then cautiously cheerful to see a foreigner in his establishment again) had turned away, his face full of bitterness and regret. 

"Buy a drink or go." the Man Gandalf had known since he was still a green lad on the verge of taking the pub over from his father had said. "We've no interest in gossiping like old maids here."

Gandalf, who might have been tempted to give him a piece of his mind under other circumstances, had only had the growing feeling that something was very, very wrong.

As they rattled on over the stony roads, the old wizard observed what he could about the passing countryside. It was impossible to tell if the seeds had been sown for the next Autumn, the fields as bare as they always were in December. It had been about a year, by the wizard's reckoning, since the freezing of the Brandywine and snow lined the fields in great frozen banks where ice had made the winter's first fall turn solid. In some places it was trampled into the mud. The roads were clear at least, but the grit and stones were all churned up as if there had been some great flood.

They turned the last bend and Gandalf's pipe fell to the ground to be trampled by the next ponies that came along. The wizard paid it no mind.

What once had been a crossroads by Gandalf's estimation was now a field camp crawling with people. There were tents set up everywhere; big, small, middling, all surrounding one central turnpike. The smoke from the dozen or so campfires that had been started was dwindling up into the air and the small, defeated forms of hobbit families huddled around them and against each other for warmth; not dressed, as Gandalf remembered them, in colourful, ballooning skirts and light trousers, but wrapped up in thick dark clothing or shivering in their rags and blankets distributed by the healers. The air was full of woodsmoke and the low-spirited hum of voices, interspersed with the sound of orders being given briskly by one or other of the cleaner looking hobbits, along with hoarse shouts for aid, fresh herbs or hands from the healing tents, and the unmistakable sounds of someone in mortal pain. Every time he heard such things, Gandalf always hoped he never would again.

Looking off past the ramshackle settlement towards Hobbiton, Gandalf could see that the fields had been put to flame. As far as the eye could see, a mixture of black soot and ashy snow.

Oh dear. It had been much worse than anyone in the world of Men had thought. For a moment the ancient Maiar, one of the last Guardians of Free Middle-Earth, a wizard who had lived over three hundred lives of men, bowed his head in shame and grief. He had failed Yavanna's children.

But he could not mourn long. He had work to do.


	4. Interlude--Nettle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nettle leaves, water, and a pinch of salt if you're lucky enough to have it.  
> An interlude.

\--Interlude--

Two little girls were lost in the snow. They wandered along roads and through woodland that they had both known since they were very small children, but the snow made it all look the same. It was no use. The elder had been of age less than three weeks and she held on to the little one's hand very tightly to stop her from geting lost. She knew they weren't going to make it back, and pounding endlessly in the back of her head was the knowledge that it was all her fault.

"Bella?" asked Prim, shivering so hard now that she could hardly walk. "I-I... _really_ want to go home." 

"I know, cuz." said Bella, cursing herself again. Why had she ever tried to leave Tuckborough? It would have been bad enough to die alone in the snow, but it was a hundred times worse to have Primula with her. Her cousin was only twenty nine, still reckless and impulsive enough to do things like  _run out into a blizzard_  but old enough that her family's hearts would not be the only ones to break if she went missing one night late in the Fell Winter. _Drogo_ , thought Bella, her heart jolting painfully. Her kind, steadfast Baggins cousin. He would be devastated if Prim died. And no one would ever find their bodies in the blizzard, none of their loved ones would ever have that peace. There would not even be flowers planted for them in the midst of this winter, and no one would have anywhere to grieve.

Bella took her cousin's hand again, yet more tightly, and the two of them trudged on. It was the only thing to do. Perhaps, after all, if they were lucky, they would come across a patrol or the Rangers would find them in time, the sun would come out or a light rain would melt enough of this snow... and Primula was stopping, sinking down with her back against a tree. "No... no, Prim, come on." Bella's voice sounded alien to her ears as she tried to lift her up. "Don't do this." Her voice broke and she felt her desperation leak through. "Prim, please! Get up!"

But Prim wouldn't get up. Her knees curled into her front, she was a dead-weight. Bella knelt down beside her in the snow.

"Bella?" Prim asked quietly.

The fight had gone out of her now, and she swallowed down her tears. "Yes, Prim?"

"I'm really sorry."

"You don't have anything to be sorry for, cuz." 

"I shouldn't have said those things."

Bella sank down beside her, the two girls huddling together for warmth. "You thought I was going to leave you. I promise I'm not going to leave you, Prim."

The two of them curled up there together, and in the silent forest around them the snow began to fall.

***

_She knew she was welcome in the Tuckborough smial, but she didn’t belong. Part of it was because of how angry she felt at times, something she still didn’t fully understand; but more than that, she was restless. The days grew shorter and as the weather chilled, the full force of her mother’s wanderlust came over her properly for the first time._

_She’d been sixteen when her mother had first taken her out of the Shire; borrowing the Bracegirdle’s cart for a visit to Bree. Her mother’s friend (her name long forgotten now, but Bella thought she had been a Banks probably) had welcomed them warmly into her home, which Bella had looked at with awed fascination; she’d never seen a house before. It was not cosy quite in the same way as a smial was, of course, but with the logs crackling merrily away in the hearth Bella had immediately felt at home._

_She had been a few times with her mother since then, and even once stayed there overnight, doubled up like sardines in a bed at The Prancing Pony. She liked its bustling, cheerful atmosphere and the strange, exotic folk passing through. Men really were as big as she’d imagined (still only a fauntling then, clutching her mother’s skirts, she had thought them quite scary. Only her curiosity had outshone her diffidence long enough to keep her there watching them, carefully from underneath her long hair.) The third time they went, Bella had even caught sight of some more sensibly-sized folk--ridiculously strong and broad. Most of them had beards, on their faces rather than their feet, and hair full of braids, copper beads gleaming brightly in the lamp light. Dwarves, her mother had told her, from the Blue Mountains most likely, by the colour of their hoods. Bella had been drawn to look at them, though she couldn’t say why but for their obvious foreignness. There was something about the watchful way they held themselves, a wariness tempered by pride. They didn’t look like the kind of people who would back down easily._

_And she wanted more and more to see such folk again. She wanted to breathe in the air thick with pipeweed, and hear the low murmur of voices, rising and falling late into the night. And most of all she wanted to see the elves her mother had told her about at night sometimes before she went to bed. Lord Elrond who was strong and wise. His sons, Elladan and Elrohir, who had much more mischief in them than their skill with a blade or their years would allow. And there were other names too of course, Glorfindel, Celeborn, Indis, Arwen and Galadriel._

_She wanted to be like the Men and Dwarves who passed through the Bree-lands, stopping only for the night at the Prancing Pony. They all had journeys ahead of them, and, to Bella it seemed, their long lives stretched out ahead of them like swathes of linen on the floor._

_But when the winter came she began to accept that she would never get that chance. The people were too many, the crops too little. Whole smials were growing short of food and medicine, more and more dying every day of cold or hunger... or in bloodier ways. No one talked about the Orcs after the first raid, which left a migrating family slaughtered in the snow. Some of them had been eaten. There were some things too awful for even a hobbit to talk about._

_Bella sometimes thought the Winter would never end--and when it did, nothing in the Shire could ever be the same again. Too many good hobbits had died, and too few flowers had been planted for them. And there were people who would be missed far more than her, so she started sneaking out at night alone and running across the snow-covered fields to wherever the gossip said there was a little food, or medicine to spare. When the Old Took (looking as frail as she had ever seen him) sat all of her cousins down and asked sternly who had been putting the extra food and herbs in the pantry, she didn't say anything._

_When she met his eyes, he was the first to look away._

_She had been out seven times and come back safely when Prim caught up to her as she tried to slip away to her secret entrance. Prim's jaw was set stubbornly, and gone was her omnipresent smile. "I know what you're doing." she told her. "You're putting yourself in danger."_

_"I'm just going to see if the daffodils have sprouted under the snow, that's all, Prim."_

_"And now you're lying." There had been a long moment between them while Bella tried to think of something to say. Prim's lower lip wobbled dangerously. "I don't want you to go away like Pearl and Ivy and Minto. I want you to stay here with me."_

_"I'll come back, cuz, I promise."_

_"You can't promise that! You're a liar!" Prim had exploded, her face turning pink. "You're odd, even for a Took, everyone says so! And now you're being selfish too! What happens to us if we lose you?"_

_Bella had to blink back tears, but a half-second passed before she pulled her cousin into a hug. "I'm sorry." she said quietly after a moment. Prim was sniffling into her curls. "But I do have to go."_

_Bella had been walking for half an hour when she realized the fauntling was following in the snow behind her._

_***_

 

When Bella opened her eyes again she found herself looking straight into another pair of amber ones. The white wolf watched her, and she watched it. She felt strangely as if her body wasn't really hers--she was detached from it, and she wasn't cold anymore. In fact, she was warm. Looking down, she realized another snow fall had buried her legs, but she couldn't quite remember why she ought to care.

There were two more wolves behind the first. Their fur looked soft. Their eyes didn't. She thought, for a moment, that she could see a kind of wry amusement in them, and blinked at the thought.

The one to the left of the first wolf, the one with the blue eyes, slunk closer, his paws padding silently through the snow. He was beside them in a few seconds and an eternity seemed to pass like that, with the two of them regarding each other with common interest and curiosity.

Then the wolf leaned forward and sniffed at Primula's leg.

The sound that escaped Bella's mouth sounded more like an animal than a hobbit, and she shot up, snow exploding every which way as she forced herself to her feet. Her legs ached as if they were on fire with pain as the movement forced them to thaw. In a flash, she had hobbled forwards a couple of steps and whacked the wolf in the nose with a large and conveniently placed stick.

She wanted to risk another look at her cousin, but couldn't take her eyes away from the wolf's. It was still looking at her, deadly still, its face tense and tight. Primula was still unconscious, her mind processed from the glimpse she had gotten as she moved, her hair soaked and her face pale and limp. Bella's cold fingers found the knife she always carried in her pocket and gripped it tightly. The wolf moved just as she thrust it out in front of her.

It made contact, blood spurting from its muzzle and leaping back with a surprised whine. The other two went for her with single-minded ferocity.

The second took a hard _whack!_ from Bella's makeshift staff and then it was half on top of her, a heavy mass of wet fur. She drove her little blade up towards its muzzle and felt blood, sticky and so hot against her skin it seemed to burn, drip on to her hands as she struggled out from underneath its massive weight. It was almost three times her size. It had been a very lucky shot.

The wolf who had tried to attack Primula disappeared into the trees almost as quickly as he had first appeared, still whining with pain and fear, and Bella felt her legs buckle in relief. She could no more have taken him on too than she could have done an entire army of orcs.

But with the adrenaline coursing through her, she had forgotten something very important she had been told about combat. _She had looked away from the third._

The wolf bounded forward through the snow and landed on her back, pushing her hard into the ground. She felt its claws dig into her shoulder, into the lump of muscle where it met her neck, and deep red blood soaked into her golden hair.

_Prim, I'm breaking my promise._

The last thing she heard for a long while was the sound of a hunting horn cutting through the air.

 


	5. winterberry (two)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wild strawberry leaves, ginger root, wintergreen and white cedar.  
> In which Bella runs into Gandalf, and Gandalf interferes--but she definitely doesn't mind, in this case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter specific warnings:  
> gore (description of infected wounds), brief mention of attempted sexual assault.

Bella had been awake for seventeen hours without rest when the camp's newest patient was brought in. 

The healing tents were never completely empty, but it had been quite quiet up til then; just a few cuts and scrapes, dressings to be changed, herbs to be doled out for the minor afflictions most of the hobbits who came to them needed help with. There were two other volunteers on shift that morning so, during a momentary lull, Bella slipped out of the tent for a breath of fresh air and went to sit on the ramshackle fence looking out over the camp.

It had been more than eleven months since the Brandywine had thawed and the wolves and Orcs had had their paths cut off across the river. They hadn't retreated entirely without a fight however, and the battle between them and the rangers had lasted three days, a main force of nearly seven hundred engaging the bulk of the rangers while opportunistic orc packs had splintered off into the villages and fields eager for the chance of some parting destruction. And they had got it--the fire they brought with them wasn't like anything she'd ever seen. The Shire's gardeners (including Bella herself, when there was enough work to be done they were willing to risk an under-age lass) had worked tirelessly throughout the winter to preserve the crops underneath the snow, through what hobbits called 'field-tricks' and what Men would probably call 'magic' if they knew of it. The snow had just begun to thaw when the Orcs went on their last rampage, revealing what lay under it to the open air; the fire took a deep hold and almost every crop-field in the Shire had been razed to the ground. Many of the gardeners had tried to protect the harvest and been killed for their troubles. There was not a family in Hobbiton or Tuckborough, as far as Bella knew, that hadn't lost someone.

Worse, there were only a few gardeners left. Most every Shire-hobbit was born with a connection to the earth, but gardeners as they were colloquially known had a true affinity with it. They were the only ones who were capable of performing the 'field-tricks', and most studied for many years before they came to be known as experienced field-hands. There had been an abundance of them once--only two or three years before--so much so that few of those with the potential ever got the chance to start their training... but now, at the time that the Shire needed them most, all but a very few fully trained gardeners were dead. Bella might even be permitted to train as one now, especially after her marriage, though before the Fell Winter (as they were already calling it) only young lads had ever been chosen by the experienced few; lasses encouraged to settle down and raise their fauntlings without the work's distraction.

She might take advantage of the opportunity, Bella thought with a sigh and a drag on the last of her pipeweed, since that was the most chance she'd get to be useful anytime soon. She and Olo Brownlock were fully expected to announce their engagement within the next few months, and Bella didn't have the strength to rail against it anymore. She could already see the rest of her life stretched out in front of her; married by the autumn, the first fauntling after about a year. They would be expected to have three or four more after that, since unlike many she and Olo were in a comfortable enough position to feed them. Olo wasn't a bad hobbit, and what else was there for Bella in the Shire? More than the rage or bitterness she would have felt a year ago over her life being decided by others, she was just tired of it all.

And then, as one or two of her aunts had tactfully reminded her, there was the matter of her scars; shiny, pink, and showing no signs of ever fading, they led from her upper back up the left side of her neck and disappeared underneath her mass of tow-coloured hair. Scars were not particularly uncommon among the survivors of the Fell Winter but more so among the lasses, and there was a very real chance she would get no more courtship offers if she declined Olo's.

The sound of hooves coming closer along the stony path shook her out of her uncertain thoughts, and she looked up sharply over the makeshift western gate of the camp. "Will!" she called as her eyes zeroed in on the figure fast approaching, and one of the sentries, young Willibald Cotton, appeared at her side.

"What is it?!"

But Bella was already scrambling down from her perch and running towards the gate.

The ranger, as they identified him by the leaf-clasp on his cloak, was young even by the standards of Men, barely twenty if her eyes did not deceive her. He was hardly conscious, still gripping so tightly to the horse's reigns that the leather had cut into his skin. Six of the most able-bodied hobbits who were free when he arrived half-lifted, half-dragged him into the healing tents, all whilst being scolded vigorously by the head healer Amaryllis; and it was only with the help of another human ranger (he'd been brought in about a week before with a festering leg wound) who ignored Amaryllis' shrill protestations that he not put weight on his leg that they managed to get the young man cleaned up and into one of the beds. 

Amaryllis, Bella and Emillia (the other volunteer on duty) all knew without a doubt as they were doing all this that the young man was going to die.

He'd lost too much blood; his femur broken and femoral artery damaged. Someone (a comrade, perhaps) had tried to patch up the rest of his wounds as best they could, but it wasn't enough. A cut to his chest was badly infected and yellow-green pus had bubbled up from underneath the dressing. The best they could do for him was give him a final, decent rest.

Bella sat with him when she could as her shift progressed, giving him water when he called out for it, and listening to him babble in his delirium about his sister and the barn and the carrot crop he needed to be home to help harvest. A dreadful lull settled over the area of the camp they were in as the people outside slowed in their duties and even the refugees grew quiet around their tents and campfires. It was not the first nor the last time that they would see someone come to a slow end but, Bella thought, it was just as horrible every time they did. It had been a while now since the first influx of badly wounded and dying from the battle had begun to dwindle, those who'd been dying dead and those who were marked for life recovered (to an extent.) But barely a year before, none of the gentle-hobbits had ever seen more than a pricked finger or a nose bleed, and many of them would have considered it quite normal to faint at the sight of blood. They had all lived quietly, some tilling the fields and some managing the estates, but all with lives full of good cheer and fun.

Many of the fauntlings Bella had grown up with no longer lived at all and those who'd survived all seemed to have a new hardiness, the bitterness of loss ingrained in every smile and insignificant motion. Bella did not not know how to help those people, any more than she knew how to help herself.

The time for her break came around, and all she wanted to do was collapse on the floor of the volunteer tent for half an hour; but something in the boy's face reminded her of her younger cousins and she couldn't turn away--she didn't even know his name. But she found herself sitting with him, taking his hand in one of her own and taking a sip of tea with the other, the heat which lingered on her palms blossoming through her chest and the spice on her tongue sending a jolt through her body. She hoped it was waking her up a little. She owed it to the dying man not to fall asleep, but it had been almost twenty four hours since she'd first arrived at camp, and she was having difficulty stopping herself from nodding off.

"Will he survive?"

The voice cut into her thoughts and she flinched slightly, looking up to see the other ranger, the one who had helped them get the dying boy settled earlier, looking across at her from the pallet he had been sleeping on. He had dark hair, a little matted with sweat, which came down to his shoulders and his expression was bleak but Bella fancied on any other day his face would have seemed kind. Surprised at the question, she struggled to find the right words to answer.

"Maybe... no. He has an infection and we don't have the herbs to treat it. Even if we did, there would only be a slight chance."

There was a pause, the ranger's dark eyes still fixed on her searchingly, then the tension drained out of him and he slumped backwards. "I know him; by sight at least. He was a recruit in my company. We had the same captain."

Bella scrubbed a hand through her hair tiredly. "I'm sorry. I should have asked before I told you."

A moment passed during which it was the ranger's turn to struggle silently to find the words. "I would not have preferred you try and... spare my feelings. I'd rather know."

Too many seconds had gone by when Bella opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again and gave him a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "I felt much the same."

There was silence between them, a moment of kinship in the quiet of the tent while outside the endless activity of the camp carried on. After a moment, the ranger's serious face broke out into a half-hearted smile and he held out his hand. "They call me Strider."

Bella got up carefully, leaning over to take it awkwardly--his hands were quite a lot bigger than hers--and said, "They call _me_ Bella Baggins," then bobbed a curtsy out of habit. She thought she saw a flicker of amusement in his eyes, but he inclined his head respectfully and she couldn't help but feel a smile tug at the corners of her own mouth, one which after a moment he returned. It was nice to make new friends, even amidst the horror and debris of the battle's aftermath. "I'm glad to make your acquaintance, Mister Strider."

They talked quietly for another hour, Strider happy enough to tell her about the places and people he'd seen outside the Shire's borders and Bella glad for the distraction to help her stay awake. Strider's friend died a few minutes later and he was taken away to the field across the camp where all the dead were buried. Strider wasn't permitted to leave the tent by Amaryllis, but Bella darted off to the stores and came back with a few earthy looking flower-bulbs cradled carefully in her hands, which she pushed swiftly into the earth over the boy's grave. The camp could hardly spare them, but there would be daffodils there come next spring, she assured him.

After that, Bella rinsed out the pot of tea and gathered her things. It was growing late, the sun past its highest point in the sky, when Olo arrived. She had been hoping to doze in the late afternoon sun awhile while she waited for her Took cousins' arrival, but the round hobbit greeted her loudly as she was making her way towards the edge of camp.

"Bella," he said, bringing his hand down on her shoulder quick enough to make her jump. He smiled brightly, showing his teeth. "I'd forgotten you were here on Mersdays."

Bella doubted that. Although everyone else acted as if they were engaged already, Olo seemed keenly aware that they were not. As such, he made it his business to run into her at least four days a week, more than most courting couples in the Shire ever had, and seemed to feel the need to touch her to punctuate every word that came out of his mouth. A hand on her shoulder, a brush of his fingers against her hair, a half dozen movements towards her every conversation, he would have been considered too forward by most even for a fiancé. Though it only ever seemed to happen when they were alone. It made her jumpy--Bella wasn't any more or less tactile than the next hobbit, but she had made Olo no promises and she had started having to resist the urge to flinch away from his touch without really knowing why. There was no harm in it she told herself, except perhaps the reasons behind it. _As if a hand on her arm could make it any more plain that you're his property in the eyes of the Shire,_ she thought resentfully, then chastised herself quickly. Olo's habits upset her sometimes but he wasn't a cruel man. He was neither handsome nor plain, only a year older than her, fortunate enough in terms of family, inheritance, income... it could be _much_ worse, she reminded herself, remembering with a shiver how mean, drunk Mungo Bolger had tried to push her up against a wall and touch her three months earlier when she had been in the Green Dragon.

The fact was this; once upon a time, she could have lived her whole life a spinster in her grandfather's home and the worst thing to come of it would have been gossip, but that wasn't the way of it anymore. The Tooks (along with most of the other established families that still had a penny to their names) were hosting half of the Shire, people who had nowhere else to go, and wouldn't, for a long time yet. Bella couldn't stay there while she had another choice, and it was obvious that plenty of her family felt the same way. More than one of her aunts and uncles had already tried to subtly ask her when she would be married and moving out.

If she stayed, it would feel like she was sleeping in someone else's bed, eating someone else's food, huddling for someone else's warmth. Someone else who needed all these things a lot more than she did. On top of that, her grandfather and great uncles and aunts had begun to spread the word among the Shirelings: the Winter was over, and things could go back to being as they'd been before. Within a couple of years, there would be no more need for the labour of womenfolk at all, and everyone could go back to focusing on love and courtship, inheritance and gossip, marriage and children. _The best thing you can do now,_ her grandfather told her one evening as he leaned awkwardly against the chimney-piece, _is to marry some decent fellow and have children. Bring some joy back into the Shire._

Bella had looked down at her skirts and tried not to roll her eyes. Privately, she thought he was being rather optimistic about how long it would take to rebuild, two years was a best case scenario (and completely ignored the fact that winter, though hopefully less severe than the last one, came every year not just when they wished it to.) Even if Gerontius' plan was successful, some of the most promising young gardeners, farmers and healers were women. Why would anyone in a crisis tell half of his workforce to lay down their tools and spend their days cleaning at home and raising children they didn't have the money to support yet?

But Bella was not the Thain, she was a barely-of-age girl around whom the scandal of her parents and her wild upbringing still lingered, so she'd bitten her tongue and smiled.

"Yes, I... took on another shift." she told Olo distractedly, looking down at his hand still on her shoulder. He looked her hard in the eye before removing it.

"Yes, you look very tired." he told her impatiently. "It's very good of you to do so much for these people Bella, but I must say it's rather selfish of you to go ruining your good looks over it." 

A beat passed, and then he laughed--it sent a strange shiver up her spine, but for politeness' sake she forced one awkwardly too. In her mind's eye, she saw her mother smacking him hard over the head with a broomstick, and she blinked. Where had that come from? She didn't have the energy to berate herself, so just chalked it up to tiredness; she really was beginning to get dizzy now, and her vision was beginning to blur. The chaos of the camp around her seemed like it was spinning when she wasn't looking directly at it.

Olo was saying something and she shook her head to try and clear it and smiled.

"... you will come, won't you Bella? My mother was saying to your Aunt Rosa just the other day about how much time we've been spending together lately, and how glad she is of course that our friendship is working out so well... "

Was Olo working up to what she thought he was working up to? Her heart dropped down to her toes. _Please, no._ She felt herself swaying in earnest now, and put out her hand for balance to grab the nearest thing possible--which just happened to be Olo. He seemed not to notice the state she was in but looked very gratified at her taking his arm and; taking a few steps forward with her hanging on to him, went on:

"I'll see you next Sterday then? Under the tree on Bagshot Row? That way we'll be able to go straight on to my parents' house to tell them our news, I'm sure they'll want to have a chat with you. My mother has quite strict ideas about how a respectable young girl ought and oughtn't to behave, but, well, maybe that's for another time. Bella? Are you even _listening--"_

Bella fell--was weightless for a split second before she felt a hard jolt and realized she was being held up by a pair of surprisingly strong, wrinkled old hands; and blinked up at the great tall Man they belonged to. A pair of vaguely familiar eyes twinkled down at her from above an unkempt grey beard and a knowing smile. Olo was still bleating up at him indignantly, though he seemed to trail off after a few moments, searching for something to say in the face of such a strange figure. 

"Miss Baggins has been taken ill." said Gandalf finally--yes, it was him. She remembered a strange old wizard who had made the best fireworks and told the best stories, remembered permanently hanging off the edge of his robes when she was younger and he'd visited. "If you'll excuse me, Master... Brownlock, is it? I'll see to her. I'm an old friend of the family's. No need to put yourself out any further, though I do doubt you would have done at any rate."

And in a trice she had been whisked away and sat down on the back of a cart, her feet dangling over the mud and a thick woollen blanket being draped around her shoulders.

"Good morning." she said, a little dazedly. It was nearly five at night.

The wizard stopped what he was doing and knelt down gravely in the mud, so he was at just the right level to look her in the eye.

"And what do you mean by that?" he asked.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mersday - Thursday in the Shire calendar  
> Sterday - Saturday in the Shire calendar.  
> Also, yes, Aragorn, because I am a sucker for Aragorn. Especially Aragorn who's fascinated by hobbits (not Boromir level fascinated, but still) and totally befriends all the tiny badass hobbit ladies.


	6. winterberry (three)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dried rose hips, wintergreen and chamomile.  
> In which Gandalf interferes, interferes, and interferes some more; and Bella still doesn't mind.

When Bella had finished telling him off for that 'good morning' business, she sat looking determinedly down at her knees and trying not to flush. She hadn't been so outspoken for a while, but really--what kind of person asks someone on the verge of passing out to solve a riddle like that? When a couple of minutes had passed, she risked a sideways-glance at the wizard sitting next to her and her shoulders slumped in relief to see he seemed to have taken the whole thing as a joke. He was looking out into the distance across the camp, his shoulders shaking with the force of his suppressed laughter every now and then.

"I wouldn't show that around if I were you," said Bella quietly after a moment, nodding at the pouch of pipeweed the old wizard was using to liberally stuff his pipe. "It's hard to get your hands on lately. You'll find it goes missing very quickly."

Gandalf stopped his humming and looked up, slightly surprised. "I hadn't taken hobbits for burglars. Why, I daresay I've never met one up til now with a thieving bone in his body."

Bella shrugged, the look in her eyes a little bleak. "I'm not sure it's in anybody's nature to steal, but the Shire is full of desperate folk, Gandalf. Pipeweed is a small comfort, but it's a reminder of home. Small comforts are all we have left."

The wizard's expression softened further and he held out his hand for her own pipe. Bella considered pretending not to have one--it wasn't very ladylike to smoke after all--but by the look in Gandalf's eyes he wouldn't be taking no for an answer. She fumbled with its hiding place (in her boot) for a moment before she found it and presented it to him, still flushing slightly under his scrutiny. He really was very tall; but he didn't seem intimidating at all. Only very old and very kind.

Gandalf stuffed it with as much leaf as it could take, then handed it back to her, lighting it to Bella's utter delight with a muttered word and a flick of his fingers, the spark he'd conjured taking hold quickly. She blew out a smoke ring (she was really quite proud of that, considering she'd had no one to teach her) and Gandalf answered it a second later with a... a _smoke dragon_ , if she could believe it. She wondered if that was how wizards spent their long lives, learning how to blow ridiculously complicated smoke rings so as to make young hobbit lasses feel inferior.

"There's nothing like pipeweed to wake you up." she said, grinning up at him. Gandalf's mouth twitched half-heartedly, but he seemed somewhat disinclined to grin back.

"Perhaps," he began gravely, "If you didn't stay on your feet all night and all the next day afterwards, you wouldn't _need_ to be woken up. And you certainly wouldn't faint, either."

Bella's shoulders slumped again, her face going blank. "It's all they'll let me do." she said. "All these people... I should be _helping_. Like my male cousins, helping the rangers patrol the borders or scavenging the great-smials or riding out to ask the big folk for help. But all they let me do is change sheets and wash bandages, cook food and keep an eye on the fires. It's getting harder and harder to look anybody in the eye, when they do so much and I do so little." Then she frowned. "What do you mean, I wouldn't faint? I didn't _faint!_ I passed out from lack of sleep, it's entirely different."

Gandalf ignored her, appearing to be lost in thought. Then he shook himself out of it. "And what does your betrothed think about all this?" he asked.

Bella opened her mouth to correct him, then felt the air leave her lungs as she remembered what Olo had been saying before her dizzy spell had come over her. He had been asking her to meet with him in private--unchaperoned. He was going to propose!  _Oh, green lady. Forgive me._  She had been hoping for another few months of freedom at least.

"He doesn't like me volunteering here." she said, more to herself than anyone else, and Gandalf frowned.

"Well, why in Arda are you marrying him then?"

Bella bit down on her tongue with a sudden noise of pain, then concentrated on breathing-- _in, out, in, out--_ in a concerted effort to control the sudden, painful ache she felt in her chest. It was unkind of him to mock her--she would have been inured to it from almost anyone else, but he had been her mother's friend; she hadn't expected it from the man who had conjured flowers from behind her ears when she was a child. However, when she looked up, her eyes full of angry tears, she was taken aback to see his face seemed only full of honest concern and curiosity.

She was wiping her tears away roughly when the handkerchief appeared under her nose. Bella took it without looking at him, and there was silence between them for a long moment, Gandalf puffing away on his pipe and Bella trying really very hard not to let him see her cry.

"I think," Gandalf said eventually, very kindly pretending not to hear her muffled sobs. "...that we might be able to help each other. I had promised a friend in the East that I would look for someone to fill an empty position in his establishment. Duties would include cooking, some washing up, consulting with the owner about the menu and potential changes to it--he's planning a complete overhaul, you see--and, when it was particularly busy, even helping serve the clientele in the main hall."

He cleared his throat somewhat awkwardly then smiled at her kindly. "Do you know, I think it might be somewhat of an adventure."

Bella had caught a hold of herself by this point, staring at him in complete and utter shock--though she did flinch, a fact that did not escape Gandalf's attention, at the word 'adventure.'

She tried to think of something to say for a long time, opening her mouth as if to speak and then closing it again quickly. Gandalf waited patiently. Almost a minute had passed before any words came out of her mouth.

"I... I don't think I'd be any good at having adventures." she whispered finally. She remembered a day that felt like years ago, two little girls lost in the snow and surrounded by hard eyes. She remembered the slight weight of Primula behind her, their legs just touching; then the vivid, ripping pain of her skin being slashed open with sharp claws, her breath rushing out of her as she was slammed into the ground. The way the heat of her blood had felt running over her skin, up til then numbed by cold.

Most of all she remembered how Primula had looked as she was being carried away by one of the rangers who'd saved them, wrapped in innumerable blankets. Small, cold and very alone.

Her cousin had nearly died that day because Bella had not been watchful enough to spot her following behind and send her home. Bella had distanced herself from everyone after that, Prim most of all. The younger girl had tried to get her to talk to her again at first, but had eventually stopped trying. Prim who, Bella reminded herself daily, was much better off without her. 

She met Gandalf's eyes to find he'd been watching her thoughtfully, as if she were a puzzle he'd only partially solved. "That settles it then." he said finally, and Bella looked up, her brow creasing in confusion. "It'll be very good for you, and most amusing for me. Meet me here at eight o' clock tomorrow morning with all the things you _absolutely_ need--though you'd best travel light if possible, it's a difficult journey--and I'll arrange your passage to The Lonely Mountain myself. "

Gandalf stood abruptly and strode away, leaving Bella to gape after him. She sighed exhaustedly, tucked a lock of blonde hair behind her ear, and wondered just what she'd gotten herself into. _And what, in the green lady's name, is a 'Lonely Mountain?'_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> green lady - Yavanna, one of the Valar and Aüle's wife. In this 'verse, I'm working from the theory that hobbits are Yavanna's children, though this is pretty unlikely in actual canon.  
> I know I said we'd be in Erebor by now, but there's going to be at least one more chapter in the Shire and I'm thinking of having one or two on the road as well. In the meantime, I've transcribed the timeline for this 'verse from my notes if anyone's interested :)  
> T.A. 2729--Thorin Oakenshield is born. His brother Frerin is born five years later, Dis ten.  
> T.A. 2770--Smaug attacks.  
> T.A. 2799--The dwarves suffer disastrous losses at Azanulbizar; Fili is born.  
> T.A. 2804--Kili is born.  
> T.A. 2832--Bella is born.  
> T.A. 2841--Battle to reclaim Erebor, with the aid of Gandalf. Smaug dies.  
> T.A. 2861--Bungo and Belladonna Baggins die.  
> T.A. 2864--The Fell Winter begins, continuing until mid-T.A. 2865  
> T.A. 2866--Bella engaged through Gandalf for the position of cook in Dori's establishment, 26/04 (about 25 years since Erebor has been reclaimed.)


	7. Sweet Dreams Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> valerian, catnip, chamomile and lemon balm.  
> In which Dori worries (as per usual) and, half a year's journey away, Bella makes a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: brief mention of past amputation

Dori poured himself a cup of steaming tea and took a minute to breathe it in, cradling it in his roughened hands. For the first time in a long time, he was beginning to think he was in need of something stronger if he was to calm his frayed nerves.

He pursed his lips at the thought.

It had been nearly twenty five years since they'd first reclaimed their ancestral home and Dori thanked his Maker for it every morning after he woke and every evening before he went to rest. The day Thorin Oakenshield (son of Thrain, son of Thror, and more importantly their blacksmith King-in-exile) had led them back into Erebor there had not been a single Ereborean dwarf with dry eyes--even Nori had teared up, throwing his arms wordlessly around both his brothers and leaving Dori to gape reverently over his shoulder at the rooms they had shared when he had still been young and Nori was a dwarfling, Ori barely a babe-in-arms. Nori's little stone baubles and wooden building blocks had still been scattered across the floor, seventy-one years after the Ri family had first run from the dragon's flame. Dori had collected them and put them away in a little stone chest he had found underneath their mother's old bed, full of keepsakes from after they had been born; a bent copper teething spoon, an ornate teapot, a pair of her favourite brass knitting needles. Sometimes he would find himself sitting on the floor going through its contents, hours lost in that way, and every time he did he thought that Smaug (the late and great Chief-est Calamity of Our Age) had been able to corrupt their ancient gold, their heirlooms and their finest jewels because nobody had loved them in quite the same way as those little things were loved; Smaug had never spared a thought for the dusty kitchens and the sitting rooms, the poky bed-chambers of the common folk, and those places had never known his stench. Though he'd never been able to find the words to say so, the silver-haired dwarf wouldn't have exchanged those little play things for a heap of diamonds, or all the precious jewels in the mountain.

He didn't _have_ hours to lose himself in thought these days, at any rate. Which was probably for the best, considering any thoughts he would have had most likely wouldn't be very good. Dori sighed, looking down into the depths of the little teacup. It still didn't hold any of the answers to his current predicament.

As much as he loved the rooms that had been returned to them when he and his brothers had come back to the mountain, they were poky and small, tucked out of the way towards the back of the mountain (or at least the back of the inhabitable part of it. There were echoing and ancient tunnels leading off into the depths of the earth which had been closed off long ago for safety reasons, and were to this day still unmapped.) Worst of all, they were far from foot traffic and difficult to find if you hadn't much honed your stone-sense--which most dwarrows these days hadn't. An entire generation had been born on the surface and even the old folk had been long separated from the hills, disconnected from the stone. There had been no use for a miner's intuition above ground.

All this would hardly have mattered if Dori's trade hadn't been... well, trading. He had a head for business and figures, could see what folk were missing from their everyday lives as clearly as any other dwarrow could see the shape of a missing puzzle-piece that helped make up a bigger picture. And more than that, he had vision. When they had first arrived at Ered Luin and he'd been taken on as an assistant by another dwarrow in business, he had been able to look at the space the other dwarrow rented to sell his wares out of and find the placement for each of them which would make them fly off the stone shelves. 

Dori also had a fondness for good food, the hum of friendly conversation, and most of all, tea. He'd taken work in plenty of public houses and dining halls over the years--it was hard work, but fulfilling to see the halls filling up with warmth and people--and knew he could manage such a business. He knew this in the same way he knew his trade, in the same way he knew the smooth texture and grooves of the beads in his hair by heart. He had managed a tea-shop quite successfully in Ered Luin

Dori looked around the oddly shaped little room and sighed. He loved every inch of its stone, but maybe that was the problem. He couldn't see it through someone else's eyes, couldn't see how best to make it appealing or fill it with welcome. It was wonky and misshapen (their mother had hardly been in a position to rent the like of the rooms in the royal wing, struggling on alone after Nori's father had abandoned them) though at least the kitchen next door was still quite serviceable (there had even been running water there once, and perhaps would be again?) and the two bed-chambers (one relatively broad, one tiny) still remained intact. Dori thanked Mahal for small mercies. It was liveable, at least. They would have a roof over their heads, even if underneath it they would starve.

He needed to redecorate completely, needed to spread the word, needed to find something to draw a crowd. He needed something new. He needed something... _exotic_.

Dori would have been embarrassed to admit how many of his last hopes he had pinned on a vague assurance by a grey Wizard. _I've seen and heard much on my travels, Dori old friend. If you are in need of a cook, then I will find you one._

 _Mahal, how had it come to this?_ He hadn't had word from Gandalf in several months. Wherever he was, Dori hoped that he at least had an idea of how to make good on his promise. His livelihood--and his younger brothers' futures--were depending on it.

-

 Halfway across the world, a small hobbit curled up into an exhausted ball and went to sleep. Three hours later she woke, and in a bleary haze, she went about packing as best she could. The three drab cotton dresses still remaining to her, the pocket knife that still had dried blood on its hilt, a bundle of herbs to brew her moon tea and stave off her courses. She went visiting then, to one of the small tents across the way, and found Lobelia inside--stopping at the camp, like all the other refugees, in her migration towards the ancestral great-smials with her family. Her husband and parents-in-law had gone on ahead. Little Lotho clung to her skirts, staring up at Bella with tired eyes, before his mama shushed him and sent him inside to bed. Then the two lasses spoke for several long minutes, their voices low so as not to wake anyone. Bella found herself telling her cousin's wife how trapped she felt in Tuckborough, how obvious and measured out her future life seemed to her to be. They stood together in silence then, Bella's face flushed scarlet at confessing so much and wishing Lobelia's face was not quite so impossible to read.

"If you married him," Lobelia began measuredly after a moment. "There would be... things to endure, yes. But there would be children, who are impossible to regret." Her mouth twitched wryly. "However hard you try."

Bella smiled at her, struck with the sudden, utterly disconcerting urge to cry. She hadn't seen Lobelia in over seven months and there was a strange electricity between them now, something which made Bella want to reach out and touch her chestnut hair to see if it really was as soft as it looked. Lobelia went on:

"And there would be other... incentives." said Lobelia, a strangely fragile quality to her voice. "If you were married, we would move mainly in the same circles. You would see me every week and that is not, I think, nothing."

"No," said Bella softly. "It is not." She would be gone in a few hours--she reached out impulsively and tucked a lock of Lobelia's hair behind her ear. It was finer than hers, and burned her fingers coldly to the touch. She knew what she had to do, as surely as she felt her heart being tugged now in the other direction for the first time. She swallowed quickly, her throat bobbing. She could see a glimpse of a future for her in the Shire in Lobelia's eyes; pushed the images away ruthlessly. She had known (some part of her had, at least) what she would do as soon as Gandalf had made his offer. She had tried so hard to resign herself to staying, and now a door had been opened to some other future and all her resolutions, all of her acceptance, had rushed out of it. That initial resignation, she thought now, would have been a lot easier if she had had Lobelia besides her.

"I'll miss you." said Bella, her voice hoarse. Lobelia stilled and looked at her for a long minute. Bella wanted very much to throw her arms around her and there was a moment when she thought Lobelia wanted to too, but it was gone as soon as it had arrived; Lobelia turned away slightly. "Right. Right, well I wish you luck." her eyes softened, though her voice was sharp. "Honestly, I do. You'll... stay safe, and look after yourself properly of course."

Bella nodded mutely, and Lobelia disappeared back into her tent with a flick of her skirts. Bella stood there for a few long seconds, then she went back to the cart and made her apologies to Saradoc who had come with a cart and pony to give her a ride back to the Took smial. 

"I'm sorry." she said, after she had explained. "But I can't come back. You... you do understand, I think."

Saradoc had been looking at her with increasing concern, but then his shoulders slumped. He gave her a small smile. He'd always been fond of her, but even more so after their cousin Paladin's leg had been crushed in the panic of an Orc raid--the bone had been broken so badly it had pierced the skin and it had had to be amputated. Bella had disappeared off that night across the fields and come back with her arms full of feverwort, which she had left by Paladin's bedside and had been used by the healer the next morning to dress the newly severed stump and stop it from becoming infected. Saradoc had always been more perceptive than the others, and Bella had always suspected he might have known.

"I came to pick you up." he said slowly. "But old Myrtle here threw a shoe. I had to stop for help and by the time I got here it was morning and you'd already gone."

Bella grinned at him, and he smiled back. He enveloped her briefly in a brotherly hug, which made her eyes sting for some reason, then he disappeared off down the road again, Myrtle's hooves clip-clopping gently in the mud.

She managed to catch a few more hours of sleep after that, curled up on the grass next to the cart with her pack. She was woken at dawn the next morning by Strider, smiling down at her. "Mithrandir has recruited me." he told her as she climbed into the cart. "In truth, I couldn't have stood another day in that sickbed. There are people who may have missed me."

Bella had been cheered by the knowledge that her new friend was coming along, even more so when Gandalf announced he would travel with them too, for a good long while. She was increasingly nervous as they rattled along the familiar roads, but in the end her leaving the Bree-lands was not a matter of great ceremony. They passed through the bare fields, laden with the last of the melting snow, then passed Bree at a distance, watching smoke rise diffidently from the far off chimneys. For the first time in a long time, Bella--Billanna--Baggins, looked out at the sloping hills and fields of her homeland with something a lot like hope.

And far off to the East, a dwarf in a lonely mountain hoped against hope that a miracle would come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't ask me. I have no idea what was going on in my head when this happened.  
> ...femslash ftw, shhhh :)


	8. traveller's tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cinnamon, chaste, mustard seeds, raspberry, shepherd's purse and comfrey.  
> In which there are trolls. And Bella hates trolls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought of a few different summaries for this one. "in which 50% of it is shameless introspection." "in which Bella thinks about things and also there's some trolls or something." I'm sorry guys. Bella is a very introspective person.  
> I also have to apologise for the long wait! it's been about four months, I know, sorry. life and mental health stuff got in the way, but it's mostly under control now. here, have this slightly longer chapter as a peace-offering!  
> as always, this fic is unbeta-ed and mistakes are my own. the hobbit, on the other hand, is not.

The journey was hard.

They were all subdued during those first days on the road, still coming across the intermittent destruction wrought by the Orcs and winter. Bella felt something painful welling in her throat at the sight of such carnage stretching on outside the Shire, and at first it seemed like it would never end. The towns and villages had largely been rebuilt (the destruction had not been so total as it had been in her home), but the trees had been put to flame and every now and then they passed smoking, skeletal structures that, Gandalf said, had once been houses. The blackened fields, stretching as far as the eye could see, made the Gardener in her want to weep, so many small sprouting, green little lives lost to incineration. Two things got her through those days: a quiet fury on behalf of the people and creatures and small, growing things; and a hair ribbon that smelt of lilies pressed carefully in the bottom of her pack. Not everyone had lost their lives to the winter after all.

But they were nearing Rivendell soon enough. The little hobbit lass was hard-pressed to keep a smile from her face in the days and weeks that followed. Strider looked amused at her enthusiasm and would tell her stories about the elves she so longed to meet to pass the time as the cart went trundling through the deep woods. That was enough to make up for a hundred discomforts. She fell and badly bruised her face on the forest floor whilst looking for fiddleheads--but Strider told her of Elrond Peredhil, who was kind and wise, and would live for many millenia among the mortal peoples of Middle-Earth. Provisions were low, but in truth Bella knew hunger better than both her companions; and besides, Gandalf spoke of a new era of peace and prosperity in the Lonely Mountain which had a rich and interesting history of its own, now Gandalf came to tell it to her.

In truth, Bella felt a strange kinship with these dwarves of Erebor. Like her, they had lost their home. Now they had reclaimed it. She thought of the strange, stocky figures at the Prancing Pony, what felt like a lifetime ago. They were a hardy people, but so were hobbits when it came down to it. They gave her hope.

Of course things could not have continued so easily. Bungle threw a shoe one day and they had to stop earlier than either she, Gandalf, or Strider would have liked. Apparently the wizard had decided not to mention that the ominous ruin they'd stopped to camp under had been home to a family of Men only five years before, who'd gone untouched by the winter--which meant it was something else that had ripped up the trees and earth around the farmhouse, itself reduced to a sorry pile of stones strewn about the glade. Instead he had muttered something cryptic about darkness travelling down further into the green lands than it usually did, leaving her to exchange a worried look with Strider before striding off.

Then there were  _trolls_. Hungry trolls. Trolls who wanted to eat all of them and made some very rude remarks about Bella's body mass. Yes, it was certainly true she wouldn't make a very filling meal, but didn't they know how rude it was to comment on somebody else's weight?

Bella took the fact that she was thinking of Aunt Camellia's etiquette lessons while being dangled upside down by a _bloody troll_ as a bad sign. The fact she was thinking of Aunt Camellia's etiquette lessons at all didn't bode well for her sanity.

In the end, it had taken Bella's wits, Gandalf's magic, and Strider's sword to end the foul creatures. The largest of them had grabbed Bungle, who had not had the wits to seek cover when they heard the monsters crashing through the trees--and Bella had not been able to endure that. She'd been about to sneak out into the clearing and free him when Strider had called her back with a shake of his head and a sharp hand motion. The ranger meant to take all three on himself and, though she disliked the idea, she had to admit that she was no warrior or strategist. And Gandalf was still nowhere to be found. But as she made to hide as Strider asked, one of the trolls glanced in their direction. It was pure luck that they were found before they had meant to be.

With no time to hide, Bella had watched her friend take on the three monsters. Heart hammering in her chest, she could no longer pretend that Strider had any true chance against all three of them alone. For a moment, her hands scrabbled desperately against the cloth of her pockets; then she had it. With her knife held high, she was suddenly in the midst of the fray. In truth her knife probably hurt the creatures no more than a rose's thorn would do to her, but she persevered anyway. With the troll's added distraction, Strider was able to hamstring one; blood sprayed out with the silver steel of his sword. He crippled another.

And then she was being yanked up into the air, up, up, up. The last troll hadn't taken kindly to his companions being cut down like trees at the winter solstice.

It was strangely comforting to see the cold fury on Strider's face when the troll squeezed and shook her. There was something about him in that moment, something ancient and serious. Something that promised her vengeance.

But he dropped his sword, even as she tried to tell him not to. _No, no, NO._ The troll he had hamstring-ed died quickly, bleeding a sluggish purple-brown from its femoral artery. The other patched itself (himself?) up as best it could, eyeing them both with a fearful rage that was terrible to behold.

Bella hoped Strider would forgive her for what she did next. She was a hobbit, and she knew a chef when she saw one. Struggling for breath, she used it to squeak out an angry protestation.

"That is _not_ how you cook a ranger, Mr. Troll!"

 Years later, unbeknownst to Bella, King Aragorn of Gondor would tell the tale of how a small, bedraggled hobbit woman had charmed and cajoled two fully grown mountain trolls into searching half a Western forest for fiddleheads to roast him with. He told it to his fellow rangers. He told it to his travelling companions. He told it to his wife and precious children, to a fellowship of brave souls on a journey surrounded by dark intent. But for now, he just watched with increasing bemusement as the tiny hobbit lass ordered two creatures of nightmare around as authoritatively as a wizened old captain of the guard.

She bought them an hour, but by that time the monsters were growing frustrated. Bella cursed herself for choosing fiddleheads as a Ranger's apparent gourmet accompaniment, since they were almost out of season. They grew scarce after the first basketful, and she was sure the trolls would decide they needed less than the 'lots and lots and lots' Bella had specified. Another five minutes were happily wasted when one of them knocked over the cooking pot, which had to be refilled and the offender beaten very hard over the head a number of times. She looked down at her shaking fingers (there was no time for fear, but her body was betraying her all the same) and was just beginning to ask herself if she would be able to trick the beasts into seasoning their meat with poisonous mushrooms when the largest of the two finally came to the obvious conclusion that they were being taken for fools.

"The dawn take you all!" Gandalf's voice rang out. The trolls turned to stone, as her mother had once told her they would, as soon as the first rays of light reached them. Bella's balance faltered--she fell.

They were on their way again, Bungle re-harnessed to the pony-cart, within a few hours. They stopped at the troll hoard for a few minutes, Gandalf disappearing inside for  moment before returning with an armful of dusty weapons, but neither she nor Strider had any wish to sleep beneath the stone trolls' shadow. Gandalf was sombre too, as they trundled away--the farmer had been a friend of his, she recalled like a stone dropping down in her stomach. 

She left him to his thoughts and went to beg Strider's pardon (she was not sure how _she_ would have taken someone discussing the best ways to eat her with creatures that were... actively trying to eat her.) He was watchful, as always, and he listened to her apology despite his evident exhaustion, hand still loosely gripping his sword. 

He was quiet for a long moment after she had finished, then took her hands from where they were nervously wringing in her dress. 

"My grandfather was killed by trolls, Miss Baggins. For a time yesterday, I thought I would join him in the Halls."

Bella hung her head in shame at that. Surely if she had just stayed hidden, he would never have been forced to lay down his sword. But he would have died, all the same--she'd seen in it his eyes as he looked out at the foe, and she could not regret it.

He laughed then, and clasped her forearm as he would a fellow warrior's. "You fought well my friend, with both that little knife of yours and with your wit. And I shall name you Dagnir-Toroguin, Trollsbane, for I owe you thanks."

"Don't be ridiculous," Bella told him tartly, and Gandalf joined in then with his chuckles. They all three of them laughed together after that--glad to be on the marked road again, glad to be in the sun, glad to be alive.

Bella thought of what her mother would say, first...  _she would have been proud._ But the exhausted girl would wake covered in cold sweat and gasping for breath, every night for many months after. It was one thing to have gone up against monsters nine or ten times her size and survived, that hardly felt real. It was another thing to think about what had happened to the human family, the farmer, the woman and their child. They must have died screaming. The trees held the horror of the place in their leaves, in the ferns and grass and weeds, if you knew how to hear it. Bella had wished she didn't, had felt her skin crawl and breath grow light and fast with nausea. She already had enough horrors to dream about for twice, three times the number of years she might yet live.

And curse Gandalf for that! Less than three months into their journey, and she had already seen monsters, when she had hoped never to see monsters again. If she had stayed, she would be warm and safe even now (at least, warmer and safer than most), tucked up in Bag End. Well--perhaps. Olo might have helped her reclaim it, to a point, for it was a fine smial--and with a husband in tow she might have begged that favour of her grandfather even without Brownlock support, especially now that the Sackville-Bagginses had left it empty and set out for Tuckborough like so many others. She might have been tucked up safely in bed at that very moment, hidden beneath the patchwork, orange, red and russet coloured quilt her father had made during the long autumn evenings when she was a child. On dark nights she would wrap herself up in it, curl up in the window seat, and look out at the winking yellow lights of Hobbiton, wondering about the families gathered around each distant hearth.

She felt a strange hollowness in her chest at that, but there was no use being nostalgic. Those hearths were abandoned now, and half their families were dead or gone. The Hobbiton of her childhood was gone with them. But she had left more than her childhood behind; she'd left all that remained of her family. Her cousins, fellow survivors of the cold hell that had descended so slowly and unexpectedly on their quiet lives in their quiet corner of the world, linking them all together irreparably. Real, tangible things, she had left... the wild, woodland haunts she'd discovered as a child, the soft green banks of the Brandywine, grand old Brandy Hall--they were rebuilding, she'd heard, it's walls still strong though its thatch had burned, smouldering for days after that first, dreadful night the lone Orc-pack had taken a torch to it. The sparse, homely room in the Took greatsmial where she had watched Paladin learn to smile again after his wounds were healed, Saradoc his gentle, wary teacher. In those days, Bella would scrounge wild flowers from the hedgerows to fill his room even as she hunted for medicine--and she'd passed many an afternoon sitting vigil by his bedside, joking with him, trying to draw out his newly brittle laugh.

And the Party Tree... the Party Tree, its boughs spreading out over the marketplace, where every hobbit in the Shire seemed to congregate on Hevensday mornings to sell what mathoms and useful pieces they could find. The Party Tree, where her cousin Lobelia had made a habit of sitting sedately every Hevensday for some time after the Orcs and wolves were first driven back; selling her lace. Hands clasped delicately on her knees even in the midst of the desperation and hawking and bustle of the crowd.

("My dear... you can't think anyone will want to buy that. You are a Sackville-Baggins of Bag End, not a common tradesperson! I'm sure there's no respectable hobbit in fifty miles who would help you degrade yourself in this way!"

"And why not? My work was sought after before the Fell Winter. Did the cold make it any less beautiful?"

Pure, vindictive fury. " _Do you think you have married into a family of drapers_ , Lobelia Bracegirdle?"

An eyebrow raised. Rosy lips pursed. A strange, hard smile. "I think that I have married into a family of hobbits who need to eat. I think that I have a son.")

Bella's fingers itched for the cloth package nestled carefully in the bottom of her pack, full of seeds and gnarly bulbs she had taken from Bag End's garden years before. It was wrapped in the work dress, fraying and ragged, her mother had helped her make on the hot summer afternoons of her childhood when it was too humid to play, and on top of it was packed the mostly blank daybooke her father had left for her, to fill with recipes and notes and sprawling topography. It had retained its faint smell of lemons. For a moment her chest ached with the missing of them--all of them. But she straightened her spine.

 _I could not have stayed._ As she thought of her mother and father, her cousins and fields and place-memories, she thought also of what she would not miss. She might have seen Lobelia at market every week, it was true, but only for an hour. She liked to believe that they both would have contented themselves with that... Bella might have reached out again, and touched her soft brown hair (the only part of her that was soft.) They would have exchanged smiles over her wares, over picnic tables at parties, deep with the promise of someting. They would have grown old together--but that was all. For the first time in months, Bella felt tears prick behind her eyes. She had not been sure she was able to cry anymore.

And she would have had her cousins, sometimes. She might have been allowed to visit the Took greatsmial, or Brandybuck Hall from time to time--but never for long. She would be needed--first by Olo, for it was common knowledge a Brownlock husband needed a wife to see to his every need and bear him his heirs; then by their faunts. She would never be free, after the first one was born. Bella wondered what her family would think, what her parents would have thought, of her thinking of children as a chain around her neck. She had hoped for children once, in a vague, thoughtless sort of way--wanted what her parents had. But all that had gone, faded, somewhere between Father's laughter--"pish and fiddlesticks, little one, some rain never did anyone any harm!"--and lying still as a fallen tree in the snow, red and white and gold, claws cutting into the skin of her neck.

If she had stayed she most likely not even be at Bag End, she told herself. Wishful thinking was all very well, but it would have taken months for her grandfather to agree; it would have to have been deemed safe first. And when (if) she ever did get back there, she would not have been able to sleep in her childhood bedroom, hiding from the world underneath its covers. She would have slept in her parents' old bed, where her father had died, and her mother had followed him. It was great, and made of oak. She had crept into it after she had nightmares as a child, and her mother would wake (she had always slept so lightly) only to shush her with a conspiratorial smile. But now she would have had to sleep there with Olo.

_No._

She would have adventures, like Belladonna. She would see things, and find her own home. She did not expect much--just a roof over her head and food to eat, and work to busy her hands and mind; something to make her useful. Bella would watch the sun rise each morning, and set again at night. Not everyone had that privilege anymore--and it was more than enough.

The sombre tone of her thoughts must have showed on her face somewhat then, because Gandalf reached out and took the reins of the horse, with a silent nod that she should slip back into the cart and sleep. She summoned a smile for him around her yawn. _We will be there soon,_ his answering look seemed to say. _Have strength, Bella Baggins._

Beside her, Strider looked out at the forest in that watchful way of his, and Gandalf's pipe was jolted from side to side above her head, moving in time with Bungle's heavy steps. Have strength she would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, notes:  
> fiddlehead - a green, tender young bracken shoot, still furled, in case you didn't know. I didn't.  
> hevensday - wednesday in the Shire calendar. (derived from hevensdei, heaven's day.)  
> traveller's tea - the ingredients in 'traveller's tea' are all plants traditionally used to reduce or altogether stop your monthlies. I can't vouch for its efficacy (or for it's non-toxicity) so I really don't recommend you try this at home, but, still. you learn something new every day.  
> dagnir-toroguin - troll-bane/troll-slayer in Sindarin. literally, bane/slayer (dagnir) of the (uin) troll (torog.) I cobbled this phrase together from the Parf Edhellen (which is a really cool resource) so I don't actually know if it's technically correct or even makes sense. I'd love it if anyone had a better translation :-)  
> the next chapter will be in Erebor and will hopefully deal with Bella's arrival--I make no promises. There should be a shorter wait this time around as well, provided life doesn't screw me over again. hope you enjoyed, and thanks for reading! :-)  
> 


End file.
